Background
Ethnicity:
He was born to a Portuguese father and Sevillian mother.
Juan de Valdés Leal was born on May 4, 1622 in Seville, Spain, to a Portuguese father and Sevillian mother.
architect etcher painter sculptor
Ethnicity:
He was born to a Portuguese father and Sevillian mother.
Juan de Valdés Leal was born on May 4, 1622 in Seville, Spain, to a Portuguese father and Sevillian mother.
By his twenties, Juan de Valdés Leal was studying under Antonio del Castillo in Córdoba.
Juan de Valdés Leal started his own workshop in Córdoba, Spain, and worked there until 1653. For the next few years he painted both in Córdoba and Seville. In his early work Valdés Leal was markedly influenced by Francisco de Herrera the Elder and by Castillo. Paintings such as the "St. Andrew" of 1645 and "La Vírgen de los Plateros" were marked by their exotic colours, dramatic lighting, and vigorous brushstrokes.
Moving to Seville in 1656, Juan de Valdés Leal and his friend Bartolomé Esteban Murillo founded the Seville Academy of Art, and later (1663-1666) Valdés served as its president. He and Murillo also collaborated in the decoration of the church of the Brotherhood of Charity. Influenced in this period both by Sevilla painters and by Herrera the Younger and Madrid painters, Valdés Leal produced such works as "Vanitas" (1660), "Finis Gloriae Mundi" and "Triumph of Death" (1660 and 1672), and "Jesus Disputing with the Doctors" (1686), all characterized by their macabre subject matter, dynamic energy, and theatrical violence.
After about 1682, Juan de Valdés Leal was beset by ill health. He died on October 15, 1690 in Seville, Spain.
Fray Pedro Fernández Pecha
The Conversion and Baptism of St. Augustine by St. Ambrose
Assumption of the Virgin
Head of a Woman
Pietà
St. Jerome
The imaculate conception
Monument to St. Ferdinand
Ascension of Elijah
Virgin of the Immaculate Conception with Sts Andrew and John the Baptist
Finis Gloriae Mundi
Ecce Homo
Carrying the Cross
Miracle of St. Ildefonsus
Allegory of Death: In Ictu Oculi
Coronation of San José
The Sacrifice of Isaac
Juan de Valdés Leal was one of the founding members of the Seville Academy of Art and became its head in 1663, having been elected the head of the S. Juan guild in 1660.
Juan de Valdés Leal married Isabella Carasquilla, daughter of Antonio Palomino, in 1647. She was also a painter. He and his wife had five children, several of whom were also artists: Lucas, Juan, Maria, and Laura. His daughters specialized in portrait miniatures.
She died in Seville as late as 1730.
Maria died a nun in the Cistercian Convent in Seville in 1730.
